Hepatic Metabolic Adaption During Prolonged Cyclic Calorie Restriction

The liver plays a crucial role in metabolic processes, and its response to fasting or intermittent fasting has been extensively studied. However, the effects of non-fasting calorie restriction (CR) on hepatic changes remain underexplored. The current data revealed new hepatic metabolic changes that do not follow traditional fasting patterns, demonstrating the liver's high metabolic adaptability to dietary content and eating habit changes. Overall design: In this study, we designed a weekly intermittent calorie restriction cycle: 50% reduction on days 1 and 4, 70% on days 2 and 3, and unrestricted eating on days 5 to 7. This pattern mimics feasible non-linear CR observed in humans. To evaluate metabolic outcomes, high-fat diets (HFD) were utilized to induce obesity and related metabolic disorders, providing a robust model for assessing the efficacy of CR interventions. Liver samples from the ad libitum (AL) control group and low-calorie (LC, Day3 of the cycle) and refeeding (RF, Day7 of the cycle) phases from the calorie-restricted group were examined via RNAseq.